Missing Paints
by PrInCeSsFBi
Summary: Peter's got to take his stick figures and make them into Michaelangelo's. If that means fixing Neal, he can do that.  Neal!Whump


**Disclaimer: I do not own White Collar **

Peter felt the cold before he opened the door to Neal's apartment. The metal of the door handle was like ice on his palm as he turned it. It was unlock and he could easily walk in. Unlike Neal to leave his door unlocked but Neal hadn't been like himself in a while so Peter wasn't really surprised. What felt like ice on the door handle merely felt like a snow cone compared to the frozen air in apartment. He could see his breath as he gave a long suffered sigh. Through the billowing curtains he caught a glimpse of his consultant out on the balcony. He didn't bother wasting time trying to delay the inevitable but he did spare a minute to consider El's suggestion he simply bring Neal home with him. It would make things a lot easier and they didn't have a cold balcony to escape to but Peter knew. He understood.

"Neal?" Peter didn't want to startle the younger man as he stepped through the open door, the bitter sweeping of New York's air as the wind played with his hair biting his face. Neal looked up at him, tired blue eyes vibrant as ever but just simply muted like a play without the sound. Peter wished he could get the sound back.

"_Peter, can I have your keys?"_

"_Nope." Peter didn't look up from his computer, bringing the warm cup of coffee to his lips savoring the bitter taste on his tongue to mask his enjoyment of Neal's exasperated expression. _

"_Peter," Neal nearly whined. "I left my phone!"_

"_See that's funny because I thought it was because the Remaille files were there." Peter added. It wasn't often he got to string Neal along and this was something he was going to draw out for as long as possible. _

"_Peter."_

_Peter looked up this time, his brow raised._

"_Are you going to stomp your foot and tell me you're never going to talk to me again."_

_Neal glared at him, his thoughts working a million miles a minute for an angle. Peter shook his head, pulling the keys from his pocket and tossing them to which Neal's defiant face switched in an instant, the smiling happy face that could trump a kid who just got a puppy any day. He gave his thanks to which Peter only nodded turning back to his computer. He should have insisted Neal finished the report. _

The tapes hadn't given them anything. Other than the ultimate scene, clues had been all but nonexistant in the twenty second clip showing a mask man come up behind Neal. Coward couldn't even fight Neal to his face. They had to come up from behind and…

Peter stopped, Elizabeth's voice of reason appearing in his head to tell him he wasn't going to help anything with his anger.

"It's cold," Peter said already feeling the numbness in his fingers as the heat eventually left his body. Neal didn't say anything just choosing to stare to the side in such a similar fashion he had when Peter caught him the second time that he would have thought he was sulking. He wouldn't deny that it terrified him how damn similar Neal looked to back then when all he had to worry about was the hurt of his girlfriend dumping him.

"C'mon Neal," Peter said softly bending down and throwing Neal's arm over his shoulder. He placed a supportive hand under Neal's leg to take most of the weight as they stood. Neal's hand wrapped further around Peter's neck, his fist silently gripping the fabric of Peter's jacket as they stood. Neal took a sharp intake of breath as he tried to put too much weight on his foot and at the same time felt the unbearable pull around his torso at the sudden stretch. But Peter said nothing, simply taking on the rest of Neal's weight and moving him back inside. Only when Peter had a firm grip of Neal did he feel the violent shudders of the con man's body. Whether it had been from the temperature, because let's face it how ever long Neal had really been outside was probably unhealthy, or some unknown emotion that Neal would never divulge, it still made Peter's heart thunder as an automatic response.

_Peter looked into the shack, his flashlight and gun aimed in front of him. The movement caught his eyes immediately. Neal was shuddering under the weight of violent memories, his body in shock. Peter cursed and took a protective stance over Neal, clearing the area before dropping down to his knee. _

"_Jones," Peter said into his radio. "Get me an ambulance. Now."_

_Neal, his hands tied behind his back, had curled in on himself. It felt like Peter had taken a baseball bat to his gut as he scanned over Neal. The potent rank of house paint assaulted his nose. Buckets of paint had been dumped on Neal, ruining his suit and caking his skin. The colors were mocking his broken body under their possessive layers. His dark locks were tainted by blue paint and along his face looked as if someone had held him down as they humiliated him with colors. They had been trying to match his eyes as if adding a fine detail to a painting. They had humiliated him, vandalized the character he had been. Broken him._

"_Neal," Peter's voice barely broke the low whispery hush of disbelief. He put his hand on Neal's leg, to let him know he was there in case Neal didn't hear him, sure it was the only part of Neal's body that wasn't coated in shame. He was wrong. Neal cried out, moving back from the touch like had burned and scrunched his face in pain. Tears leaked out of his eyes from the sheer intensity that it made Neal's stomach roll as he retched violently. Peter didn't know what to do. The foreign state of Neal's aversion to touch...A touch usually worked in such instances. He had picked up on that early on their partnership that it had been the small moments of contact that made Neal calm once he was so worked up. A hand on the shoulder was usually Peter's way of making things better but now he was too afraid that he would hurt him even more. Instead he scanned Neal for any sign that would cause instant distress, from top to bottom. _

_Peter blanched, freezing on the spot. Neal's pant leg had bunched up in Neal's sudden retreat from the only comfort he knew just enough for Peter to see the dark hues that were definitely not the black that was Neal's tracker. Peter pulled the cloth up, fighting against the deep sounds of petrified fear coming from Neal and was almost sick to his stomach. The ankle was bent unnaturally, the skin dark and shaded not by paint but by the bruises. _

They had taken a hammer to Neal's ankle, most likely to get the anklet off. Severe trauma to the torso, legs, and groin had given all reason to assume they had kicked Neal for hours. The dark circles under Neal's eyes were reminiscences of his two black eyes and the yellowing around his throat in a shape of a hand print was the only few reminders that Peter could see of what had happened. He placed an extra blanket on Neal, warming his body from the attack of cold air he had forced himself into. Neal was asleep before his head hit the pillow, but he wouldn't be for long. Peter knew that much too. He had spent countless hours since Neal's release from the hospital waking up to find drool on the file he had been looking over and his friend thrashing in his sleep. Not making a sound but face pale and drained from any sense of color and that's what had made Peter fill with his anger once more. Sure, Neal would bounce back. His cocky smirk in check and smart comments fully loaded. The bruises on his body would disappear and his broken ankle would heal. Peter was sure of it. But they had still stripped his friend of the man he once was. Peter hadn't missed that Neal's paints had been put away. Where, he wasn't sure but they were gone and that's all he needed to know. They had stolen Neal's color and his love of all things rich and bright. The bastards that did this had accomplished that much at least. Deep oceanic blues no longer spoke to the con man and the textured mixture of brown and greens didn't whisper the spring breeze to him through his fingertips. He wasn't going to let them win though. Peter wasn't going to let them take the one thing Neal still had and would always had no matter how much Peter had tried to change the man he once was. Peter would fix this even if it meant picking up a brush and evolving his stick figures into Michelangelo's. Somehow, he would fix this.

Peter wasn't the type of man to take the law into his own hands for personal vengeance.

…But when he found them, Peter wasn't sure what he would do.

**a/n: So just a little image I had in my brain since second period AP Gov. Review and let me know!**


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